Tag Archives: Mindset

The Dynamics of Self-Sabotage

We’d rather experience failure, loss, and pain than seeing our beliefs invalidated. As a result, our lives are a manifestation of our beliefs. That’s good news and bad news at the same time.

Let’s start with the bad news. Most of our beliefs are unconscious. So, we aren’t aware of the beliefs that shape our lives. Moreover, our beliefs are subject to the negativity bias.

Our ancestors had to take into account the worst case scenarios all the time to survive in the wilderness. Obviously, our living conditions have improved over the years. However, we inherited the negativity bias from our ancestors and pass it on to the next generation.

There are unconscious, negative beliefs in our psyche and they are shaping our lives.

The good news is that we can become aware of our unconscious, negative, limiting beliefs and replace them with positive ones.

Self-Sabotage at Work

Nathaniel Branden explains the dynamics of self-sabotage brilliantly in his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.

A man receives a promotion in his job. He believes that he doesn’t deserve the new position. He believes that he can’t succeed at it. As a result, he doesn’t give 100% at his new job. Deep down, he thinks he’s going to fail anyway, so why make an effort?

His negative belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. His lack of effort results in failure in his new position. As a result, he loses his job. Facing a career bump is less painful than facing his belief invalidated.

Moreover, what if he gave 100% and still failed? That would be even more painful and meant that he was truly incapable.

Self-Sabotage in Relationships

Deep down, a woman has the unconscious belief that she isn’t lovable. She might have formed this belief because she didn’t receive any love from her father who believed that fathers had to be strict with their children.

When she gets into a relationship and the relationship works out well, her belief of being not lovable is challenged. This disturbs her, and she starts to act in a way that causes trouble in the relationship. Eventually, her partner breaks up with her.

She’s sad, and she doesn’t get what happened. She doesn’t understand why her relationships follow the same pattern and end the same way. Deep down, her belief that she isn’t lovable is reinforced once more.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that they can’t develop new skills in areas where they aren’t naturally gifted. As a result, they don’t make an effort to adopt new skills. That limits their options in their lives. They end up living lives that are less than their potential.

People with a growth mindset believe that they can develop a new skill if they put in the effort necessary. Encouraged by their mindset, they work on developing new skills that are necessary to realize their potentials. As a result, they end up living happy, fulfilling lives.

Summary

We carry a large set of unconscious, negative beliefs in our psyche. When our beliefs are challenged, we get disturbed. We act in a way to change the course of events that challenge our beliefs. This process is mostly unconscious.

Our behavior is mostly irrational, and we might have a hard time understanding why we act in a certain way. This is how self-sabotage works.

The way to fix self-sabotaging behavior is to find the underlying belief and replace it with a more positive one. How to do that will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.

Self-Programming

When you google the words subliminal, subconscious, and unconscious, you get the following definitions.

subliminal: (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without their being aware of it.

subconscious: of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings.

unconscious:

(adjective) done or existing without one realizing.

(noun) the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behavior and emotions.

The Effects of the Unconscious on Our Results

These three words have a lot to do with our performance and success in all areas of our lives. Our unconscious contains countless programs that we aren’t aware of. Those programs affect how we perceive and interpret our reality and how we make choices, act, and behave.

Our unconscious is filled with biases and fallacies. These beliefs are irrational. Once you bring them to a conscious level, you realize that they are unreasonable. Yet, we go through our days, making choices, acting, and behaving based on these biases and fallacies.

We don’t question our beliefs. We aren’t even aware of most of them. Yet, they influence the results we produce in our lives. They are based on our experience and on the experience, our ancestors gathered in their 4.5 billion years of evolution.

Beliefs Based on a Limited Experience

Our experience is limited. We can perceive a very limited set of phenomena in the universe. We can perceive a limited range of sound frequencies and light spectrum. Our experience is limited to Newtonian physics, which is only valid for large objects that move slowly compared to the speed of light.

Some of our inaccurate beliefs in our unconscious mind are practical in our day-to-day life, but what about the rest? What if they keep us from performing at our best and reaching our true potential? What’s the best way of dealing with those beliefs?

Discovering Our Limiting Beliefs and Replacing Them with Empowering Ones

Shakti Gawain has an exercise to discover our limiting beliefs in her book Creative Visualization. You need a pen and two sheets of paper. On the first sheet, you write your goal repeatedly, in the present tense, as if you have already reached it, using your name and in three different persons.

  • I, Burak, weigh 165 pounds.
  • Burak, you weigh 165 pounds.
  • Burak weighs 165 pounds.

As you keep writing your goal over and over, be mindful of what comes up from your unconscious mind. If you pay attention, you’ll realize all kinds of limiting beliefs coming up. Write those limiting beliefs on the second sheet.

  • I never weighed 165 pounds in my adult life.
  • I’m too busy to work out.
  • I’m too stressed to stick to a diet.

Keep doing the exercise on both sheets until no more limiting beliefs come up. The knowledge in the second sheet is precious. All of those beliefs stayed in your unconscious and influenced your choices and behavior so far. They kept you from reaching your goal.

Now, it’s time to reverse your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Write down your empowering beliefs, post them somewhere you can read every day, and read them every day.

  • I can burn 25 pounds of fat.
  • I have time to work out.
  • A healthy diet lowers my stress.

Summary

Most of our beliefs are unconscious. They are a product of the limited experience of ourselves and our ancestors. Even though some of our beliefs are practical for our day-to-day life, a good deal of them keep us from performing at our best and realizing our goals.

You can discover your unconscious limiting beliefs by writing down a goal repeatedly on a piece of paper. As your limiting beliefs come up, write them down on a separate sheet of paper.

Once you’re done writing your limiting beliefs, come up with the empowering opposites of those beliefs. Read your new empowering beliefs every day and see how they affect your performance and success.

Law of Attraction or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Does law of attraction work? Does believing in a future event increase its likelihood? Can you improve your chances of success by visualizing it?

Contrary to the opinions of diehard believers or skeptics, the answer is “it depends on the context.”

You’ll probably not win a well-designed lottery game through visualization. However, if your success depends on your actions or on the actions of others, you’ll be increasing your chances by believing in a positive outcome and visualizing it.

How Does That Work?

Your belief in a specific outcome influences your behavior. Your behavior affects the outcome directly or indirectly through the actions of others. The result reinforces your belief. This cycle forms a positive feedback loop, and it is called self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • Imagine, you believe that a project will fail for sure. How hard would you work on it, if at all?
  • Imagine, you believe that a partner will break up with you. How would you approach your relationship?
  • Imagine, you’re sure that you’ll be fired from your job. How much effort would you invest in it?

In each case, your belief in an adverse outcome will contribute to its manifestation.

Now, consider the opposite. Imagine, you’re confident that you’ll make the sale, win the competition, or realize your vision. How motivated would you be to work toward them?

Influence on Yourself and Others

If you look at those examples carefully, you’ll recognize two categories, our relationships with ourselves and others. Self-fulfilling prophecy applies to both categories.

Your belief in your success at learning a new skill will increase your chances at it. This is called the growth mindset. The opposite of the growth mindset is called the fixed mindset. Your mindset is self-fulfilling prophecy applied to your relationship with yourself.

If you expect your team to perform well and communicate your expectation to them, you’ll be increasing the chances of your team’s success. This is the application of self-fulfilling prophecy to your relationships with others.

The Dark Side of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

There’s also a dark side of self-fulfilling prophecy. Racial and gender stereotypes are a typical example of self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if a girl isn’t expected to succeed in mathematics and science classes and treated that way, she will probably not.

When you practice self-fulfilling prophecy, you might also risk failure by overconfidence. That’s most of the time not a real risk because of our negativity bias.

In either case, not seeing the success a 100% certainty but a high probability works better. In other words, you can use the 5-to-1 ratio when using the self-fulfilling prophecy as well.

Being Too Realistic Is Hazardous for Your Success

Self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t need to be grounded 100% on reality to work. The rumors of the insolvency of a bank can cause a bank run. When a sufficient number of people withdraw their money, the bank will become insolvent.

If you’re too realistic and admit that you may or may not succeed at your goal, you’ll be reducing your chances of success by not taking full advantage of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Conclusion

If you think you’ll win the lottery by visualizing it and getting into the feeling, you’ll probably fail.

Believing in a positive outcome on a venture that depends on your own behavior and on the actions of others increases the likelihood of a positive result. This is called self-fulfilling prophecy.

And let’s face it. Most outcomes that are worthy of pursuing involve our or other people’s involvement. That makes self-fulfilling prophecy an effective tool in your mental toolbox.

Bridging the Gap between Your Expectations and Your Reality

As a computer programmer, I’m inspired to apply software development, engineering, and problem-solving ideas in my life. Today’s post will be about one of those ideas, test driven development.

In the traditional software development process, the implementation precedes the tests. This is the intuitive way of programming because most programmers tend to write their functional code before starting with the tests.

In the test driven development (TDD) process, the traditional development process is reversed. In TDD, we start with tests first and then write the code that satisfies those tests.

What Does All of That Have to Do with Your Life?

Let me explain. Two values are compared in the unit tests in TDD, the expected and the actual value. That has a lot to do with our psyche. When our expectations and our reality don’t match each other, we are either positively surprised, or we feel psychological pain.

I don’t advocate living a life without any psychological pain. I don’t think it’s even possible. And some psychological pain could be beneficial to get motivated and to make progress in our lives.

I do recommend managing our expectations consciously so that we make progress toward worthy goals.

Step 1. Determine Your Expectations

The first step of applying TDD to your life is to determine your expectations. You might object this step. You might say that you already know your expectations. That’s not always the case.

We all have conscious expectations. We also have a lot of unconscious expectations, in other words assumptions. When our unconscious expectations are violated, we get surprised, even shocked.

When you’re driving a car, you assume to arrive at your destination safely. You might be shocked when someone rear-ends you.

In the first step, we need to become aware of our assumptions, which is a process that takes a lifetime. But the more progress we make, the better.

In this step, we also examine our conscious expectations. Maybe, we let go of some expectations, and we add some expectations.

Step 2. Determine Your Reality

In step 2, make a reality check for each expectation from the first step. To which extent does your current reality satisfy your expectations?

Step 3. Determine the Gaps between Your Expectations and Reality

In some cases, your reality might satisfy your expectations. That’s great. We need to acknowledge those cases and be grateful for them.

To maintain a positive outlook on life, I recommend acknowledging five satisfied expectations for every unsatisfied expectation. This 5-to-1 ratio is important to keep a positive attitude in various areas of our lives, including our relationships and our self-esteem.

Once you acknowledge your satisfied expectations, it’s time to determine the gaps between your expectations and reality.

For example, one of my expectations is to be energetic throughout the day. Nowadays, my reality doesn’t satisfy this expectation. I feel sluggish early in the day, and my energy levels increase in the evening.

Step 4. What’s the Reason for the Gap between Your Expectation and Reality?

Now, take one of the gaps from the step 3, ask why there’s a gap between your expectation and reality. When you ask that question, you might come up with multiple reasons. For each reason, you can go several levels deeper by asking the same question repeatedly. This is also called the 5 Why’s method.

For example, I’m sluggish early in the morning, because I don’t sleep well. Why do I not sleep well? Because I drink too much coffee throughout the day. Why do I drink too much coffee throughout the day? Because I feel sluggish throughout the day, especially early in the morning.

Step 5. How Can You Bridge the Gap between Your Expectations and Reality?

Now that you have found the root causes of the gap between your expectation and reality, it’s time to close that gap. What can you do to bridge that gap?

In my case, the root cause seems to be me drinking too much coffee. I will replace coffee with green tea for 30 days and see how that will affect my energy levels throughout the day. If this doesn’t work, I might need to repeat the steps 4 and 5, but I have a strong feeling that it will work.

Summary

We all have conscious and unconscious expectations. When our reality doesn’t match our expectations, we either feel positive surprise or psychological pain.

We can manage our expectations consciously to reduce our stress levels while making progress toward worthy goals. We can do that in five steps.

  1. Determine our expectations.
  2. Determine our reality.
  3. Determine the gaps between our expectations and reality.
  4. Find the reasons for the gaps between our expectations and reality.
  5. Find ways of bridging the gaps between our expectations and reality.

Be the Person Who Receives What You Want

You can approach a goal in two ways. You can try to get it. Or you can try to receive it. One is a direct approach. The other is an indirect one.

Our intuition is to go after what we want directly, but in my experience, receiving it works better. The reason for that can be explained easily.

Our intuition includes 4.5 billion years of evolution. In a significant portion of that period, we weren’t subject to a legal system as we are now.

Before the civilization, when we wanted or needed something, we simply went out and got it. That’s rarely the case right now. Now, we have to work, earn money, and then fulfill our wants and needs with the money we made.

A System of Voluntary Exchanges

Our system now is based on voluntary exchanges. That means we need to create the conditions that would result in us receiving what we want. That sounds obvious when you read it, but I believe that we carry a different program in our unconscious mind.

In our conscious mind, we know that our system is based on voluntary exchanges. In our unconscious mind, we still carry the program that goes out and gets what they want.

Most of the time, we act from our unconscious mind. We act out the unconscious programs that don’t work anymore. As a result, we get disappointed, frustrated, and wonder what’s wrong with the world.

Practice the New Paradigm Consciously

To achieve the results we want, we need to practice the new paradigm consciously until we make it second nature. In my experience, the best way to do that is to develop the identity of the person who receives what I want.

Let’s say you want to make a million dollars. Instead of asking how you can make a million dollars, ask who you have to be to make a million dollars.

Your answer might be to become an entrepreneur to make a million dollars. Now, ask yourself how you can become an entrepreneur. What are the differences between you and an entrepreneur? Determine those differences and work on eliminating them.

Here are a few ideas.

  • Entrepreneurs don’t trade their time for money.
  • Entrepreneurs work on unproven ideas.
  • Entrepreneurs don’t waste their time.
  • Entrepreneurs are open-minded.
  • Entrepreneurs are decisive.
  • Entrepreneurs take calculated risks.
  • Entrepreneurs are systematic in their approach.

And the list goes on. You might disagree with some of the points. You might have your own perception of an entrepreneur. That’s perfectly fine. The goal here is to define those traits and to work on cultivating them.

Conclusion

Our genetic inheritance includes programs of going out and getting what we want. That approach doesn’t work in our society anymore because we live in a system of voluntary exchanges.

In the system of voluntary exchanges, we need to receive what we want. In my experience, the best way to do that is to become the person who receives what we want.

To achieve that, determine the traits of the person who receives what you want, and cultivate those personality traits.

When you become the person who receives what you want, what you want comes as a byproduct.

The Dark Side of Motivation

“Do what you love, and the money will follow.”

“Follow your passion.”

“Get into the feeling of the wish fulfilled.”

These are some quotes from the positive thinking, feel good, self-help literature. They might or might not work you.

But there’s another side of motivation that isn’t much talked about. Yet, it can be dangerously powerful. It can demolish everything that crosses its path. And that’s what we need to do at times.

I’m talking about the dark side of motivation. The dark side of motivation is about using your darkest emotions to motivate yourself. Those are high energy emotions that are usually perceived as negative. They can be anger, fear, frustration, and even disgust.

How Does Positive Motivation Work Out for You?

How does “doing what you love” and “following your passion” work out for most people?

How do you feel like when you “get into the feeling of the wish fulfilled?” When I do that, I feel relaxed, happy, and content. I don’t feel the least bit of desire to get the work done to get the wish fulfilled in reality.

I get into the feeling of the wish fulfilled as the last resort when I’m exhausted and about to give up. I use that feeling to stay in the game. It has its use, but most of the time, it’s the dark side of motivation that ignites me to do my best work.

How to Use the Dark Side of Motivation

Is there anything that makes you angry? Are you worried about a future event? Are you frustrated by something? Does a situation disgust you? Great!

Take inventory of those situations, events, and conditions. Make a list of them. Remember them and get into one of those dark emotions. That can be anger, fear, frustration, and even disgust.

How do you feel now? Aren’t you more energized and focused? Now, do you still feel like scrolling your social media feeds? Or do you want to use that energy on something constructive to overcome the infuriating, disgusting situation or to avoid the dreaded event in the future?

Using Fear as Motivation

Let’s say you’re worried that you’ll lose your job to artificial intelligence in the future. The only way you can avoid that dreaded future is to take computer science classes now. But you have to do that in your spare time.

Nevertheless, you like entertainment. You want to hang out with your friends. You can’t say “no” whenever they call you. And that keeps you from taking the computer science classes now.

After all, you work hard during your day job. And your job seems to be stable for now. Who would know what would happen after ten years anyway?

What would make you quit hanging out in the evenings and taking those computer science classes instead? “Getting into the feeling of the wish fulfilled?” Or cultivating and feeling an intense horror of losing your job and your standard of living?

Conclusion

Even though most of the self-help literature recommends that we think good feeling thoughts, positive thoughts and emotions work only in limited cases as motivation.

If you want to eliminate distractions and laziness and focus on work, you need to cultivate some high energy, dark emotions, like anger, fear, frustration, and disgust.

Your Perception of Reality Is Skewed

Here’s How to Fix It.

Back in the day, when our ancestors had to survive in the wilderness, they had to take every threat seriously.

In those days, the humans who expected the worst and prepared for it survived and passed their genes to the next generation. As a result, we inherited the negativity bias from our ancestors.

The negativity bias helped our ancestors to survive in the wilderness, but how useful is it now? Moreover, what is its impact on our lives today? Those are some questions that are worth pondering upon.

The Negativity Bias in Communication and Leadership

Since negative stimuli have a higher impact on people, its common communication and leadership advice to balance an instance of negative feedback with five instances of positive feedback. This is also known as the 5-to-1 rule.

The same rule is also useful in our relationships with ourselves. If you’re finding a lot of faults with yourself, you might be damaging your self-esteem. This is a common pitfall of personal development.

For that reason, when you come up with points of improvement, you need to balance them by acknowledging your accomplishments, no matter how small. This is something that we aren’t used to doing, because of several reasons.

First, it is discouraged to blow your own horn. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge your own accomplishments. Second, our negativity bias makes us underestimate our accomplishments, almost blinds us to them.

The Negativity Bias and Your Perception of the World

There’s another use of the 5-to-1 rule, which is much subtler because it is on the level of perception. When we perceive the world, we notice the negative more and discard the positive easily. That keeps us from forming an accurate account of reality, which is a crucial skill to succeed in life.

To calibrate our perception to match the reality, we have to make a conscious effort to recognize the positive to balance the effects of the negativity bias.

The Negativity Bias and Relationships

This idea is especially useful in relationships. Think about a person in your extended social circle that you aren’t fond of. This can be a colleague, a relative, or a neighbor. Why do you dislike this person?

You might come up with a list of reasons to dislike the person you’ve chosen. Now, think about a list of reasons that makes them a good person. Think about the instances when this person was nice to you.

If you’re objective, you’ll find as many reasons to like a person as to dislike them, but you ended up disliking them because of the negativity bias. You needed five times more reasons to like that person than to dislike them. And that person didn’t provide that many reasons to you.

The Negativity Bias and Your Life Situation

This is not only relevant to relationships but also to situations. Maybe, you don’t like your job, your finances, or your health. But if you look closely to them, you’ll find as many reasons to like them as to dislike them.

Again, the idea here is to make a conscious effort to recognize and acknowledge the positive in your life situation.

Conclusion

Our evolutionary inheritance includes the negativity bias, which makes us perceive the reality worse than it is. That had some advantages for our ancestors that used to live in the wilderness.

The negativity bias hurts us more than it benefits us today. It lowers our quality of life by keeping us in a constant state of discontent.

The way to overcome our negativity bias is to recognize and acknowledge the positive in our lives and in our relationships.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t come up with points of improvement and work on them. That means having a positive attitude when working on them.

Success Is Making Unknown Known and Creating Order out of Chaos

In the last few weeks, I was listening to several podcasts by Joe Rogan with Jordan Peterson. Peterson says that our lives go back and forth between the domains of chaos and order.

You’re in the domain of order when your actions produce the results that you expect. You’re in the domain of chaos when your actions don’t produce the results that you expect.

I really like that definition of chaos and order. It’s relevant to us who dare to get out of their comfort zones or who are forced to get out of their comfort zones by life.

When you’re in uncharted waters, you inevitably get into the domain of chaos when your actions don’t produce the results that you expect.

The Back and Forth between Chaos and Order

Success requires going back and forth between the domains of chaos and order. You need to go into the domain of unknown, try a series of actions, and probably fail at most of them. You need to keep doing that until you succeed.

Once you find an action that succeeds, then your work is to bring that action into the domain of order. You build a system around it. You increase your efficiency. And you scale it. In other words, you make unknown known and bring order to chaos.

Edison and the Light Bulb

With his attempt to invent the light bulb, Edison went into the domain of the unknown. He failed at thousands of experiments to produce the light bulb. This is the exact definition of the domain of chaos by Jordan Peterson.

Forget the fact that we have the light bulb for a moment, and think about a man who fails thousands of times at his attempt to invent a piece of technology. What would you think about him? How would you feel if you were him? That must have been a frustrating process, isn’t it?

Once Edison found a setting that worked, he documented it, got a patent for it, and built a business around it. In Peterson’s terms, he brought it into the domain of order.

Edison’s light bulb venture fits into our requirement for success, which involves going back and forth between the domains of chaos and order.

Applications in Daily Life

You don’t need to be an inventor to benefit from the theory of the domains of chaos and order. You can use it in your daily life as well. I use it often in my day job.

My job requires learning a new piece of technology every once in a while. When that happens, I’m in the domain of chaos. I’m clueless. Most of the time, my actions don’t produce the results that I’m aiming for. That can be a frustrating process at times.

I learn by reading the existing documentation and through experimentation. I keep working on it until I get the expected results. Once I figure it out, I immediately start with the documentation process. This is how I bring that piece of technology from the domain of chaos to the domain of order for myself.

I use Evernote for documentation and tag my notes so that I can find them easily the next time I need them. As a result, I ended up with a knowledge library over the years, which is proven to be very useful when I have to deal with a piece of technology which isn’t documented anywhere else.

Conclusion

There is nothing worthwhile in the domain of known. You need to get into the domain of unknown to discover something valuable. Once you do that, you need to bring it back to the domain of order. That’s how you succeed.

Getting into the domain of chaos inevitably involves failures. A series of failures result in frustration. How are you going to deal with that frustration? That will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

You’re An Idiot. And That’s Great!

If you’re like the average person, you’ll be insulted by the title of this post. If you aren’t, that’s great because that means you’re open-minded and ready for improvement and growth.

Think about all the information available to us. How much of it do you know? If you’re realistic, your knowledge is negligible next to the information available to all of us. Doesn’t that make you an idiot?

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Socrates

You might argue that most of that information isn’t useful for you or for your life. You’re probably right. Let’s take all the information that would be useful for you and for your life. How much of that information do you know? Most probably, still a minuscule, negligible fraction.

Add on top of that all the irrationalities and biases that you carry with yourself as a result of 4.5 billion years of evolution. Doesn’t that make you an idiot?

We’re All Idiots

Now, you might either reject that idea or embrace it. You might refuse it because you might think that it’s toxic to your self-esteem. If that’s your excuse to deny it, just realize that almost every human shares the same condition with you. And yes, that includes me.

Let the possibility of being an idiot sink in.

One Idea Can Turn Around Your Life

Maybe, you’re missing one simple idea to turn around your business, your finances, your relationships, or your life. If you accept being an idiot, you’ll be open to that possibility, look for that idea or ideas, and implement them in your life.

There have been multiple cases when a simple piece of information made a huge difference in my private and professional life.

In some cases, a single well-formulated Google query led me to the solution. In other cases, I had to spend more time studying to get results in a particular field. In either case, learning improved my results.

Most of us are idiots compared to our potentials, and that’s great news.

We have an enormous room for growth and improvement.

I don’t know about you but knowing that I’m an idiot makes me feel excited.

Imagine you learn only 1% of the information that is available to you and use it in your life. How would your life look like?

The problem isn’t that we are idiots. The challenge is to cultivate the humility to accept our ignorance, do our best to learn what we don’t know we don’t know, and to apply it in our lives.

You Can Overcome Your Challenges

If you’re experiencing challenges in your life, you might be one Google search away from the solution, or it might take a little more time to research and find the answers.

In either case, think about all the information and knowledge that’s available to all of us. There’s a good chance that the solutions to your problems are already available in that body of knowledge.

All you have to do is to formulate your problems and search for the answers. If you can’t find the solutions by yourself, ask others. You can hire a professional, or you can ask your question on an online forum like Quora.

The answers will come to you if you’re open to them and if you have the humility to admit your ignorance. When they come, your life will be transformed.

Your Definition of Toughness Doesn’t Serve You

What comes to your mind when you hear the word toughness? The stereotypical guy who wears leather jackets, rides a motorcycle, eats meat, and drinks beer? If that’s so, you define the word tough as “prone to violence.”

Needless to say, that definition won’t help you much in today’s society. If you think you’re tough, you’ll be aggressive toward others, even if you don’t get physical.

With that attitude, you might think you’re “getting things done,” but in reality, you’ll be alienating people, and from time to time, you’ll get in real trouble.

Both Ends of That Definition Is Problematic

You might think that you aren’t tough, because you’re a civilized person. In that case, you’ll be nice to everybody, all the time, no matter what they do, and no matter what the conditions are.

Both attitudes are inadequate in today’s society, and both stem from your definition of the word tough as “prone to violence.”

How are we going to solve this problem then? Yes, you’ve guessed it right. We’re going to adopt a different definition of the word tough.

Tough: to be able to endure hardship or pain.

That definition is much more useful in today’s society if you’re living in a Western democracy or in a society that resembles it. Now, what comes to your mind when you adopt that definition? A woman who gives birth to a child naturally comes to my mind.

The Virtues Included in Toughness

With that definition, you don’t need to be aggressive toward others, get into trouble, and alienate people to be tough.

That definition involves the perseverance to keep working toward your goals when the going gets tough. It entails having the self-discipline to stick to your commitments no matter how hard they become.

It requires cultivating the courage to face your scariest fears. All of that sounds more meaningful and useful to me than “being prone to violence.”

How to Develop Toughness

If we define toughness as “the ability to endure hardship or pain,” how can we develop it? No, you don’t need to become a masochist, but some fitness training might help. The first thing that comes to mind is weight training.

Weight training could improve your toughness, but in my experience, jogging works better. When lifting weights, the hard part is over after a few repetitions, and I can rest. With jogging, I’m subject to an extended period of demanding, low-intensity physical activity.

Lifting Weights vs. Jogging

When lifting weights, my body is in pain, but my mind enjoys the process. When I first started jogging, my body didn’t like it, but my mind hated it. It lacked the stimulation of lifting weights and induced unbearable boredom.

Nowadays, I’m getting used to jogging and even starting to enjoy the process. Perhaps, it works, and I’m getting tougher.

The Wim Hof Method

There’s another method I’m trying nowadays. That’s the Wim Hof Method. It’s a combination of a breathing method and cold showers.

You might think that I wouldn’t mind the breathing but hate the cold showers, but it’s the other way around.

After 45 seconds of deep breathing, my body gets used to the cold shower, and it’s like swimming in the sea. But that breathing feels so boring.

Find Your Own Practice

What I find uncomfortable and what you find uncomfortable can be different. The bottom line is to develop toughness, find something that you find uncomfortable and do it. In other words, love the pain.

1% Improvements

You don’t need to take the hardest challenge in your first attempt when developing toughness. All you have to do is to get out of your comfort zone 1% every day. Those 1% improvements add up over time.

For example, you don’t need to take a cold shower on your first attempt. At the end of your regular shower, turn the water as cold as you can endure, and spend one minute under it.

Turn the water colder every day until you reach the coldest position. When you reach that level, increase the duration by 15 seconds every day. Needless to say, don’t do cold showers if you have any health conditions to avoid fainting and injury.

Use Inversion

The second way of developing toughness is to use the inversion method. That is eliminating everything that weakens you. That might be an internet addiction, recreational drugs, including alcohol and coffee, or gaming addiction.

Cultivate Compassion

The third method is cultivating compassion. It’s hard to develop compassion toward a person when you’re immersed in anger.

It requires stepping into their shoes and looking at the world from their point of view. And it’s a rewarding skill in the real world.

Conclusion

If you define toughness as “being prone to violence,” you’ll either embrace it or discard it. Neither option is beneficial in the long run.

If you define toughness as “the ability to handle hardship and pain,” and work on cultivating it, you’ll increase your chances of success in the real world.

There are several ways of developing toughness, physical activity, eliminating the habits that weaken you, and cultivating compassion.

And don’t forget, it’s a process. You can develop world-class toughness by improving your self-discipline, courage, and perseverance by 1% every day.